Lloyds to offer business seminars

Date: 9th February 2010

The Lloyds banking group is to hold a series of seminars aimed at helping small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to recognise and understand the "business benefits" the Olympic and Paralympic Games could offer them.

More than 500 of the advice events are to be held across the country in the build up to the Games being held in London in 2012.

The group also announced that it is to make £1 billion of funding available to SMEs in order to help those who are involved in existing projects and those who are currently bidding for the remaining contracts.

Funding will be made available to companies who have contracts with either the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) or the Olympic Development Authority (ODA).

Truett Tate, Lloyds group executive director of wholesale, said: "British businesses could reap significant rewards from the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

"We want enterprising firms to know that, wherever in the UK they happen to be, there is still time to take a share of the Olympic pie. We also want to encourage firms that are not yet involved to act quickly."